THE BEE MOVIE

When Kant stipulates in his book Logic that animals aren't capable of judgment because a judgment is an "idea about an idea," I thought that that pretty much closed the books on animal reasoning, but does it close the book on animal rights?

Many animals do have a cortex, but only one of them has a neo-cortex. The neo-cortex (from what I understand) is where our ability to do math comes from -- someone like John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) -- for instance -- is impossible among dogs or pigeons much less spiders.

The cortex is capable of simple rational decisions (to flee or to fight), but it can't do higher mathematics, or think about the elegance of two different equations having to do with game theory.

Game is lame.

At any rate, I'm with Kant, I suppose, for now, but I realize a lot of my contemporaries want to emphasize the connection between animal and human that has been made by the Darwinians.

I watched the Bee Movie this morning with my play schooler. It stars a dissident bee who wants to sue humanity for stealing their honey. The bee (played by Jerry Seinfeld) not only wants this to stop, but he wants reparations, as well. He sues the rock singer Sting for cultural appropriation. He sues Ray Liotta. He's lawsuit happy. And at the end of the film, the bees win jurisdiction over their honey, and now the bees lay down on the job and live off the fat of the land and the world withers. Central Park in NYC turns gray. I guess we do depend on bees. But bees don't know this, and moreover, there's no way to tell them. They've been doing what they do for 27 million years. Bees cross-pollinate, which is helpful, but it's accidental. However, without bees, the movie argues, there would be no flowers, and no flowering trees.

A lot of kids movies are about animal rights but they invariably anthropomorphize. In this film, a human played by Renee Zellweger spurns her fiance in favor of the cute bee. Her boyfriend IS a bit of a Neanderthal, but she trades him in for a bee?

Do Animals Think?, by Wynne, puts bees in their place and shows us how they are hard-wired and do relatively little mentally speaking. Also, they are drones. They don't mate or have flirtations with humans.

Is it a kind of orientalism to posit a sexy human spirit for bees? Will at some point this whole movement be arrested as a kind of spurious nonsense and its purveyors put in prison for some crime like bad science?

We do have to cooperate with nature, and this means not stepping on bees, but I think it's wrong to give bees rights. I like their honey, and I think we have the right to it, a right that's given by God, in Genesis. In return, we are supposed to be decent stewards of the environment. So don't step on bees, but don't pay them reparations.

Summer in the Catskills

Winter was actually pretty long and drawn out here in the Catskills and it's only this week that the delineation of trees has begun in the form of green.

I haven't mowed the yard yet. The grass doesn't appear to have grown, but it IS green.

My kids are playing outside. Last night we went to the Relay for Life and milled about a bit. The Relay for Life is about supporting cancer victims both dead and alive. My first grader got freaked out about death as he was going to sleep, and his mom said we would protect him against cancer. So he calmed down and went right to sleep. This was wonderful, even if it isn't true. We would of course do anything we could to protect our children, but in some cases it isn't possible. Children do get cancer, and there's nothing much that parents can do except pray for them, and hope that others will pray for them. Terrible things happen to children. There are evil people who want to hurt them around almost every corner, and yet it is important that they remain blissfully unaware of this.

It's important to calm your children down, and let them know you are on their side.

Meanwhile, I'm just surfing on the net and wondering what people are talking about and thinking about. I went to Ann Althouse's blog. She had a big post this morning about the Bill Moyers' interview with Jeremiah Wright. I have never taken Moyers seriously since he interviewed the colossal goofball Joseph Campbell and took Campbell seriously. Campbell was a cupcake at best with no brains at all who tried to argue for instance that the Madonna with Child images in Christianity are identical to the images of psychotic Egyptian goddesses holding their children as they are about to devour them. Moyers nodded obediently, completely unable to think for himself, like some ... Althouse uses the term "puffball" for Moyers. Moyers apparently did the same puffball thing with Reverend Wright (I don't care to watch the video just now, as Moyers aggravates me).

And in the middle of the 50 comments someone named Theo Boehm who is generally quite liberal in his commentary, linked to this vid by a black guy who is in favor of the war in Iraq, and in favor of W. I watched the entire video. It's lengthy (allot 30-40 minutes): but priceless. The man doesn't appear to have a formal education and he has a very odd beard (get me talking about black hair events at some juncture), but his ideas, and his logic, are quite good, esp. if you think that this seems to be a rant out of the blue, and without a script. The guy must have a stratospheric IQ. I agreed with him on every point he made, and cried at the end. His name is Zo (he is otherwise unidentified):

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=7618598

The Boundaries of L.S.

If you draw a conceptual border around Lutheranism, and draw another conceptual border around Surrealism, you have a Venn diagram in which the third aspect is those areas that are contained in both of the larger sets.

1. An interest in beauty.

2. A concern for animal welfare (this tradition is weaker in surrealism but can be seen in Breton's Arcane 17, and in many of Soupault's poems).

3. An interest in the marvelous.

4. Certain philosophers fit into both schools: Hegel, who was Lutheran but is not considered nearly as central to contemporary Lutheranism as is Kierkegaard, but foremost and especially there is Georg Hamann, who was much liked by Kierkegaard. Hamann is a Prussian Lutheran who is said by Isaiah Berlin to have practically founded the Romantic movement singlehandedly, and surrealism in particular (which Berlin didn't particularly like).

5. I'm obsessed with Hamann, and yet I can't really understand his work. I've read certain essays of his a dozen times, but can't penetrate them. However, the sentences that I do grasp are like perpetual rays of light:

"Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind [Geist] nor bond of society"

However, he then argues that language is first and foremost, POETRY. That is, that poetry precedes argument, just as the GARDEN (of Eden) preceded FIELDS.

The overlap between Lutheranism and Surrealism (a very tiny aperture, no doubt) is illuminated by Hamann as the keyhole of POETRY, which is both divine, as well as original and even preceding sin, and is an aspect of what is left of common grace (common grace is that aspect of humanity that is still divine, and still can remember with sorrow the Garden of Eden).

LUTHERAN SURREALISM FOR CHILDREN NOW UND ZEN

Here's some of the things going on around here.

At http://www.miniclip.com/

There are hundreds of free games. Wait for it to load and go to the one called UFO Joe. It's listed alphabetically.

I've gotten to level ten. The kids can get to level 15, and win the game. Basically you are an alien trying to abduct sheep and cows. It's fun.

Two nights ago I had to take down a hornets' nest from the back eaves. You wait until night falls and then step up on a chair, and scoop the football sized nest into a plastic bag and tie it tight before the bees come screaming out for revenge. Scary, in the moonlight. I expected the bees to come right out like they do in the Pooh stories.

However, it took them about fifteen minutes to figure out what had happened. And now they're all dead -- about 400 hornets altogether. Actually, I am not sure if they are dead. I put the nest into the garage in a transparent trash bag.

Just as I scooped it off the back eave one leg of the chair I was standing on slid four inches into the ground, and I slipped and fell, and then rolled with the plastic bag full of hornets, but still managed to tie the bag as I rolled.

I wanted to clear the back yard of the hornets for the following day because another Finnish mom was coming over with two tots. And they were going to run on to a water slide right past the hornets' nest.

I prefer to play the games at Miniclip.com. I didn't enjoy the reality of taking down the hornets' nest, but it is much more memorable, just the same. It's an event I won't forget for the rest of my life I think. The hornets' nest was so soft. Softer than a birds' nest. Softer than paper. It was like the sweetest toilet paper, even softer than Charmin. And now it should be in the county dump, with all its doldiers, dead. However, I am afraid to drive to the dump with those hornets in the back of the car. What if they got out and stung me while I was driving! So I will wait another two weeks, and then cautiously open the garage door. First, a few inches...

PERFECT DAY FOR LIBERAL CAPITALISM

It's 72 degrees out. I walked down to the Post Office. At 2 pm they reopened on the dot, and I put in the book I had sold through Amazon.com. Then, I walked up Clinton St. up Bell Hill, through the forest lane, back down on to campus. I saw men working on a roof. They had t-shirts and shorts, and one man had his shirt off. Students were throwing frisbees, playing hacky sack, and sipping beverages. I checked my calorie counter: 113 calories expended.

I have a 2.5 hour class that begins in an hour. It's my humor theory course, and I really want to get into the issues regarding psychoanalysis and humor. But I'm going to have to trick them into it somehow. I know they will ask me to step outside. I know that I will say no. I can't focus in the face of such a florid afternoon. I will keep them in the dark for as long as I can.

Meanwhile, I sip a Diet Pepsi, and drum my fingernails on the desk thinking: how am I going to get their minds off this summery day?

Such problems compared to the folks in Tibet or in Zimbabwe.

Here, the post office works and the staff is punctual. Everyone I know has been fed, and political violence seems far away, reserved for those forced to live under communist imperialism. In an elective democracy like ours, where people actually leave when they are voted out, no such worries. We can focus our attention on humor theory. The people of Tibet and Zimbabwe, on the other hand, have to deal with communist airheads with no sense of humor about themselves, or the fact that communism died its final death in 1989. Those communist countries that are still alive are alive only in the way that zombies are alive. And their people are forced to endure a life that is much like that Romero film called the Day of the Dead.

MY LOUSY DAY

I woke up a little groggy after a whole night of nightmares in which my sordid friends of decades appeared as Bolivian storm troopers in Maoist outfits marching.

I made the lousy oatmeal that I eat every morning. I had a last cup of yogurt but the date ended yesterday. I put it on the cereal anyway, and hoped for the best. I sprinkled the last few raisins into the yogurt and went down the steps. Not having had my shower yet I stank a little as I ate, but I tried not to mind.

I took a shower. The lousy shower has a leak at the bottom, which I've tried to repair a dozen times to no effect. Each time it just gets worse. Now I just line the shower with tissue paper to soak up the excess moisture. I sure wish I had a brain!

I got to school with ten seconds to spare, and went into my classroom. The first class is incredibly sluggish, but they are too scared of me to sleep or text. We talked about Andrei Codrescu and I showed them thirty minutes of Road Scholar. Codrescu was quite good as always and I didn't want to take it off, and talk. I just wanted to watch the film, and enjoy his breezy wit. The funny thing that no one knows about Andrei is that he's actually incredibly crabby in person and goes off on people all the time and then is sorry. You never see this in his poetic or screen or radio output.

The philosophy class was on Kierkegaard. No one had read it but Alaina. She always reads everything. The students do pay attention and are relatively alert in that class, though. I explained a lot about Kierkegaard, and about his strange ditching of Regina Olsen and how he explained it as a sacrifice to God. Some of the students are Christians in the class, but none are Lutherans. Kierkegaard does not seem to have had any sense of politics whatsoever. He's a total solitary that reminds me of Edvard Munch's The Scream.

I ate two boxes of frozen lasagna at lunch. It was good, and I wanted to have a third one but didn't have one.

Someone had left a giant mushroom cloud of a cupcake in a plastic box and I ate half of it. It had caramel kisses in it. The calories. It must been 250 calories that I like didn't need.

However, I was thinking that if I played soccer with the kids I would work these off. I went home and we played for an hour and a half, but the kids kept getting stomach aches and going inside.

Finally I went in and made myself a cup of Pero but all the handles of the coffee mugs are broken and I scratched my thumb on one and blood came right out.

Sat in front of the TV. The channel switcher had been raided for batteries by the kids for some little computerized noise device. I scrounged for batteries and found two under the couch but they were the wrong size and then gave up. Read children's stories to the kids for an hour. They kept fighting with each other to get closer to my lap, the baby being surprisingly strategic by using her elbows to needle the toddler into giving up his place, which he did, but not without tears and cries of unfair.

Now it's time to put them to bed. I can't wait until they close their eyes so I can get back to reading about the life of some weird mathematician by the name of Nash who went nuts and had a film about him called A Beautiful Mind. I've just been told to move. It's 8:30. So I had better get going.

The Poor Shall Always Be With Us

Jesus said in Matthew 26:11 that "the poor shall always be with us."

However, last night Barack Obama said that he would cut poverty in half.

At least he didn't argue that he was going to be the Second Coming with a change of heart, and indicate that he was going to eradicate poverty altogether. That would speak of hubris.

But why half? Is it going to be exactly half?

Why can't he do a little more? Why couldn't he cut poverty by six-sevenths?

Will he take each poor person and cut their debt by half? (I'm assuming that he won't cut THEM in half.)

Or will he take half the people, and make them rich, while keeping the other half dirt poor?

Any way you slice his statement it's heartless.

American Idle

I was supposed to finish reading Harold J. Berman's book on Lutheranism and Law this week, but he started getting into Calvinism, and I lost interest.

I was supposed to clean my office at home this week but I found a book called Bob Dylan Redeemed, and sat down and read the whole thing. It argues that Bob Dylan has always been a Christian but that he keeps this obscure because he doesn't want to revolt his fans. One of his oddest arguments is that the song Everybody Must Get Stoned, is actually about the tendency to throw rocks at people.

I've been selling lots of books through Amazon.com. I sold Eusebius' History of the Church this morning. The print was that tiny 9-point junk that Penguin must have opted for at some high-level board meeting. I couldn't read it, but while standing in line I read that Jesus' Brother James was thrown off a building and then clubbed to death for refusing to distance himself from Jesus.

Interesting stuff, but my head ached from the tiny print.

I meant to lose 3 pounds this week. I did play soccer twice with my elementary school kids. I'm 51, and find that I can still run fast in spurts. But it takes me longer to recover from a spurt. My chest heaves as the little wizards fly past me on the way to their goal. They beat me 10-8 in one game, and I beat them 15-13 in the grudge match two days later. I used to be a soccer star and even played with professional and Olympic level players a few times and could still play. I was All-League three years in a row. I try not to kick the ball too hard but did let it fly at one point and the boy in Play School said, "That hurt, Dad!" Time out. I realized I'm not allowed to kick the ball so hard. So I have to run and dribble and be delicate. But the kids are maniacs, and will dive to save a goal! We played for an hour and a half and every muscle in my body aches this afternoon, but it's a good ache.

But I still didn't lose any weight. The calorie meter said I had only spent 200 calories after the game.

I intended to read a book by Kierkegaard. I didn't. I intended to send out some poems. I didn't. I intended to travel to Albany with the family but we decided that the gas cost was too high.

I find that I lie around on the couch watching the Tibet debacle on the news, while the toddler climbs on me, making me laugh.

I tried to stop using Tylenol PM. Last night at 2 in the morning I got up and took some. I had been staring at the ceiling for 2 hours, but finally got a good six hours of sleep.

I did rake the yard with my wife. We got eight bags of leaves up. I took a car load of trash to the dump.

I took the kids for a bike ride around the circle. Lots of my neighbors are police officers. I love to talk with them about the crimes they are facing, so there's a lot of stopping for chat, and my kids say, "Not again!"

I wrote to fifty Lutheran college libraries and asked them to buy a copy of my novel, Temping, using the review that came out in Lutheran Forum. It's easy and cheap to do this since I do it on-line.

I feel groggy and I feel that everything is pointless. I should look and see what Silliman has up on his blog. I looked. He's sick, and has nothing up. The lazy piker! I should look and see what Thomas Basboll has up. Same thing, about how he loves Barack Obama! I wonder what Jacques and Em, Tom, WW, Carl, Brett, Helen, and others are reading.

I got two books in the mail today: American Humor, An Anthology and Handbook, by Richard Michalski, and Wittgenstein and Aquinas, from St. Augustine Press. I think I may use the American Humor book in my next composition course, but I feel so tired as I open the table of contents, that instead I try to post this blog note.

I find that the coffee substitute called Pero is almost as good as Postum. I'm about to try a drink called Dark Mayan Chocolate, from General Foods International. It is an "artificially flavored coffee drink mix," but I feel too lazy to put water in, and microwave it.

I read the NYT this morning about the Dalai Lama's trip to Seattle. Norm Arkins was a spokesman for the U. of Washington in the article. He's a great guy, husband of Mona Modiano, one of my favorite teachers at that university. Norm said the Chinese government tried to force the U of Washington to turn the Dalai Lama away, his first trip to Seattle since 1993, when I heard him speak.

The Dalai Lama is the world's sweetest man. I bet he never has lazy days like these when you're supposed to try to get something done, but instead post a blog note about how you just can't, how you can't, how you just plain can't. In many ways I would like to look at my shoes for an hour, and just might end up doing that.

I'm supposed to write a book on Marianne Moore, and did finish two articles, but don't have the oomph to do any more today. I have to slog through hundreds of Marxist-feminist articles on her to write them, and can't do it any more. They've buried her. She wasn't a feminist. Well, she was a woman, and no doubt she cared about women's rights (who doesn't?), but primarily she was a Republican and a Presbyterian, and a poet, who has been drafted into the Marxist-feminist chain gang. What dreck to read through the lousy lazy criticism of her work! The whole notion of Barthes that the pole of the reader has eclipsed the role of the writer allows them to just say anything. And am I the one to free her from this chain gang? It's an enormous undertaking to free anyone from that chain gang. And maybe I should just admit that I can't. Maybe I'll let her sing the song of the Women's International that she's been forced to sing in death.

I wanted to work on Frank O'Hara but read Joe LeSeuer's book, and he keeps talking about penises, and how he and Frank just loved them! I just couldn't take it. I decided to sell all my Frank O'Hara books through Amazon.com.

I have a bunch of books by Richard Brautigan, but some of them are just plain bad. All the books of poems, for instance. And some of the later novels. Just painfully bad is the one called Willard and His Bowling Trophies, but even the book In Watermelon Sugar is unreadable. I still love Brautigan as an idea, but I find him increasingly hard to read. I can't even stand Trout Fishing in America. He does have two very good books: Revenge of the Lawn, and The Tokyo Montana Express. But so much drivel he wrote even in those two books, esp. in the latter one!

I had lunch with the mayor of the biggest local town, Oneonta. He never has problems getting anything done. He's like that rabbit that just keeps moving. No detail is too small, nothing too big. He tackles it and gets'er done, as the saying goes. While the rest of the world is watching American Idol, there's another show going on called The American Idle.

Many of us are the stars of that particular reality program but I think all things considered, I take the cake.

Ok, I'll go make this substitute coffee and see if it causes me to percolate.

REPUBLICANS VS. DEMOCRATS, CONTINUED

I met with a lot of flak over my last posting on this, so I decided to think further. I think that the Republicans are interested in law and order, while Democrats are interested in the Gospel. Lutherans distinguish between these two and call it Two Kingdoms. I was going for a description of this, and found the following table on a blog by Jesse Jesperson. He said he had gotten it from a theologian by the name of Walther (Lutheran). The problem is that the government is meant to be the law, it is not meant to be the Gospel. I think the Democrats confuse law and gospel. I do think they are Christians in most cases, but they are very confused Christians, possibly because they are from denominations that have either confused the two kingdoms, or haven't adequately differentiated between them. Marx was a confused theologian, and also has inextricably mixed the two, but often Marxists deny the necessity of the left column altogether, creating utter chaos:

Table 1: A Comparison of Law and Gospel

The Law The Gospel In the heart by nature Known only by Scripture Identifies sin Proclaims grace Commands obedience Forgives disobedience Demands Promises Says we are unrighteous Declares us righteous Justifies doers of good Justifies without the Law Frightens and terrifies Quiets and comforts Threatens Assures and reassures Afflicts the comfortable Comforts the afflicted Condemns and curses Acquits and blesses Anger, wrath and outrage! Kindness, pity and love Imprisons Frees Says what we must do Says what Christ has done Says you are guilty Says you are not guilty Prepares ground for seed Sows and is the good seed Takes Gives Cannot save Saves to the uttermost Reveals God's wrath Proclaims God's mercy Says that God hates sin Proclaims God's love Provokes further sin Motivates fruits of gratitude Gives no strength Strengthens and motivates Punishes Forgives Despair instead of hope Hope instead of despair Brings death Gives life Provokes man to sin Moves to deeds of gratitude Uncovers hell beneath Opens heaven above Sends to hell Takes to heaven

WHAT DISTINGUISHES DEMOCRATS FROM REPUBLICANS?

I think it's that Republicans want the family to be the central institution. Generally, Republicans have families that are functional, intact, and prosperous. They don't want to have to shell out for those who don't have functional families either in terms of taxes or other governmental support. An ethos of fair competition pervades the Republican discourse.

On the other hand Democrats want the government to be the central institution. Generally, Democrats have families that are dysfunctional, disintegrated, and aren't faring very well. They want the government to shell out support.

However, some Democrats are SYMPATHETIC to the plight of those for whom the family is not functional, and feel bighearted to the point of being communist. They want to take from those who are making money, and give to those who aren't. (From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.) (This seems to be the case of the three leading Democrats. Edwards said in one of the debates none of us up here behind the podium have issues, we're going to be just fine. Thank you.)

I am a centrist. My family is intact, functional, and yet not terribly prosperous. Therefore, I like government set-asides for families with children. On the other hand, I think that government should not ENABLE or ENCOURAGE families to become dysfunctional and disintegrated. On the other hand (you'd be surprised at how many hands I've got) I think that if people are trapped in violent families, they ought to be able to escape, and the government ought to help them.

So basically, my brain is a ping pong ball, shuttling between Democratic and Republican ideas.

If I had a demographic that represented me, or to whom I feel most sympathetic, it might well be the rural church-going poor. Somehow the heartbreak of a banjo, as played by a redneck who believes in Christ, moves me much more than that of an academic from a prosperous family toting Marx and talking about what a signal success socialism has been in Zimbabwe, and how it would be a good thing in America, too.

The rural poor are blockheads who believe in Jesus. They are waiting for the Rapture. They listen to God-awful music, and have no shoes on their feet. Movies mock them, books mock them, TV shows mock them (Beverly Hillbillies), in academia they are a laughingstock. Mike Huckabee rode a wave of support from that demographic. When I visited my relatives in Iowa as a kid, I recognized these long-lost cousins, aunts, and uncles as my own. To what extent are they still the heart of America? As the price of ethanol surges, we may yet find that they are the new millionaires once again, this time with ethanol, rather than Texas tea, as their lottery ticket.

AS TIBET IS TORCHED AND TORTURED

The Maoist attempt to utilize the symbols of the west continues. The Olympics were first held in Greece to promote the unity of the city-states through an awareness of athletic beauty. Thus, culture was a way to rise above nationalism.

However, the Maoists are attempting to use the Olympics for their commercial value, and also to create a legitimation for their horrid nationalism, the worst in world history, with some 100s of millions of deaths on their hands. In Tibet alone, they have used cattle prods and illegal detention, as well as organ harvesting, in order to create a terrified population, after having already killed more than half of the Tibetan population. And yet still the spiritual struggle of Tibetan monks continues. May Tibetan Buddhism live forever!

Now as the sick Maoist horde parades their torch of cultural genocide around the world, it is right and fitting that all the youth of the western nations let them know that we do not accept their methods or their products or their mentality. We don't accept cultural genocide in Tibet. And for once, Lutheran Surrealism is on the side of the young and free thinking people everywhere, now that they are AGAINST Maoism. And we are heartened by the journalistic accounts of freedom of speech throughout the western world. We look forward to the following accounts:

"On its way round the world, the torch will visit a total of 23 cities in 34 days. After London, Paris and San Francisco, security is expected to be particularly tight in Canberra, Australia, where there is an active Free Tibet campaign as well as a sizable community of exile Chinese falun gong practitioners, and in India, home to the Dalai Lama and much of the Tibetan exile community."

But of course the torch will pass through the dark heart of Communist China itself, and in those heavy days we will see the masses parading happily around the torch, since to behave in any way that is not ordained by their criminal state is asking to be tortured if not torched.

Let's show the Chinese what freedom of speech means. And let's behave lawfully. We must symbolically and at every level protest the mayhem of the mindless Maoist murder-freaks.

THOUGHT IS A DISASTER

If thought were not a disaster, then it would be easier. But since thought is difficult, thought is a disaster.

Why is thinking so difficult?

You'd think God would have made thinking easier.

Red Chinese products are cheap, so people buy them.

Maoist thought is prevalent, so people buy into it.

But everything Red Chinese is junk. They even call their boats "junks."

They give our children lead-lined toys to try to make our children even sillier.

They fed us via Sollers and Kristeva, Lacan and Foucault, the notion of "Cultural Studies," a westernized version of Mao's Cultural Revolution: the worst atrocity in human history.

No one knows that the French Postmodernists were in reality Maoists.

Change the name and nobody can discern the lineage.

Thought is junk. Whatever floats your boat sinks your nation.

Like a submarine for decades I've tried to sink Cultural Studies. It sails on, unperturbed.

Meanwhile, I'm disturbed.

Locke, Kant, Hamann, Breton, Luther, Arendt have been swept off the table.

To make room for junk fashioned by the Red Chinese.

Trust your car to the man who wears the star.

Do I go too far?

What bitterness drives thought like a torpedo to blow up the wrong fish?

Roe roe roe your U-boat, gently up the esteemed gentleman's ironic salmon stream,
Bringing us centuries of Maoism by any other name.

FREE TIBET!

I watched a video with Annie Lennox interviewing a quiet dignified Tibetan monk named Palden Gyatso. "I spent most of my life in prisons built by Chinese in my country."

He talks about cattle prods, and other instruments of torture. It is very much like what the communists used in Marxist prisons in Bucharest, Romania.

Palden has a book, called "Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk."

There is also a book by a woman who went through similar conditions. The woman's name is Ama Adhe. Both books can be found through Amazon.com.

You can watch the video with Lennox here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWRdfriizYE

2 Updates

1. Finnish Foreign Minister known as the Finnish Spitzer, resigned today:

The leader of Kanerva's National Coalition Party, Jyrki Katainen, told the party's online newspaper Verkkouutiset that Kanerva "no longer enjoys the kind of trust and respect which would make it possible for him to continue as foreign minister."

Kanerva, 60, has for several weeks been embroiled in a scandal after he sent approximately 200 text messages to 29-year-old erotic dancer Johanna Tukiainen whom he met at the end of January.

The gossip magazine "Hymy" on Tuesday published 24 of his SMS messages, some of which contained flirtatious and sexually suggestive content.

2. I'm beginning to get along without Postum. I find that Pero is a good enough substitute. In fact, I can't taste the difference although the ingredients are radically different. I prefer the Postum jar since it was so old-fashioned and was made out of glass. The Pero container is cardboard. But Pero is pretty good. The only problem is I feel disloyal to Postum. I feel I should mourn it longer. However, I am beginning to limp along without it. It will never be forgotten. But I think I can live on! Life must continue! Life will continue!